Hey everyone, hope you all had a great weekend! Yesterday we hit 75% funding and are 3/4 of the way there with more than half of the campaign still yet to come! Your support has been incredible, so thank you again. As mentioned on the weekend, you’ve unlocked the first Social Reward by reaching 4 Social Goals, so without further delay, we present to you the Grappler class:

Grapplers thrive in close quarters combat where their fists, mind & reflexes are both a shield and a weapon. While wearing only cloth armor can leave them somewhat vulnerable, they are masters at blocking and countering attacks, and when wounded can slip into a meditative trance to heal themselves.

Here are a few abilities that the Grappler possesses:

Crippling Force: The Grappler cuts through the air with his fist and hurls a shockwave towards his target, damaging and stunning them for 1 round

Three-Fisted Fury: The Grappler dashes forward towards his target and lands 3 lightning quick strikes. If the target dies during the assault, the Grappler dashes to the nearest enemy within range and repeats the ability.

Hurricane: The Grappler delivers a powerful roundhouse kick to the target, damaging and knocking them back 2 cells. Any enemies caught in the knockback are displaced and suffer damage.

We hope you like his look, and of course if you have any thoughts or just want to discuss the class further, we encourage you to leave a comment! With that out of the way, we’re now only a few Social Goals away from unlocking the next reward which is alternate skins for each class. Here’s a little preview of what that will look like!

To find out what you can do to help unlock the next reward, head to the Social Goals section on our main campaign page.

Now that we’ve discussed the main attributes that make up each character(if you haven't yet, go check out the earlier updates!), it’s time to cover character progression. In part one, we’ll be going over some different ways for your characters to progress: aging, leveling up and ranking up.

Since the game is open ended and multi-generational, your characters will grow older until they either retire or die. But a character’s age is not just a number, and it actually has an influence on their primary attributes too. Every attribute in the game has an age bracket where it’s considered at its peak, and your character’s attributes will shift accordingly every time they grow a year older.

For example, a character’s Dexterity would peak somewhere around 25 years old, but their Wisdom attribute would not hit its peak until 60. This also plays a small part in determining when your characters choose to retire. A rogue class could be recruited as young as 16 but may choose to retire before they hit 50. Conversely, finding a young mage might prove difficult, but the ones you do recruit would likely stick around well into their 70s. I’d also like to point out that this does not mean that a character is useless before and after their peak; it’s best to think of their peak as an added attribute bonus like this:

The other way for characters to progress is by leveling up. Every level-up grants a character one attribute point and one ability point for you to spend. I probably don’t need to explain attribute points very much, except to say that you are free to spend them on any primary attribute of your choosing.

Ability points have a bit more depth to them and really allow you to customize your classes. Each class has 6 abilities, and each one of those has its own mini skill-tree of augmentations. Each ability tree is unique unto itself, and various augmentation options are available such as increased range, additional targets, lowered cost and even added conditions(like stun, snare etc). With these trees, two characters of the same class could end up quite different from one another, with each specializing in different aspects of their kit. One could be all about raw power and maximizing the damage on their most expensive ability, while the other may be more useful in hindering enemies by focusing on augmenting their utility abilities.

The last point to cover today is ranks and ranking up. There are 4 different ranks for a character to go through: Novice, Rookie, Veteran and Master(names subject to change). A Novice begins with 4 of the 6 class abilities available to them. Upon achieving the rank of Rookie they will earn a 5th, and becoming a Veteran will unlock the final ability. Once the rank of Master is achieved, that character is then able to become a mentor to another character of the same class. A mentor is able to pass on some of their more positive traits to their apprentice, in addition to boosting the rate at which they earn XP.

Tomorrow in part two, we’ll cover some of the other ways that a character’s stats can be temporarily or permanently altered: Traits, Injuries & Illnesses. Hope you enjoyed the write-up, and as always we encourage you to drop a comment below and let us know your thoughts; we’d be happy to discuss things further!

Thank you for reading and for your support. We're in the final 2 weeks now, and with under $10k to go we hope things can continue smoothly!

Eight days to go and we’re nearly 95% funded! Our community continues to be amazing and we are so grateful for all of your support! As soon as we hit our goal, we’ll be unveiling the 3rd stretch goal, but for now…let’s talk about character customization. We’ve already discussed a few aspects of customization such as ability skill trees and the mentor system, and now we’re going to dig into a few more

Probably the most basic way to customize your characters is by renaming them, which you can do at any time in the overworld. There are a few rare exceptions to this however: some recruits may be part of a noble House, or their backstory may require their name to be locked for continuity sake.

Gear is the most impactful form of customization. It can be purchased from city vendors or traveling merchants; looted from chests, corpses or enemies; or given as a reward for completing a mission. Each character possesses 6 equipment slots for you to fill out. Some gear will be unique to a specific class, while others may be shared across multiple.

Armor: We’ve consolidated all the typical armor pieces into a single armor slot. All armor types are sorted into 3 categories: Light, Medium and Heavy with each class in the game being restricted to a single category. (eg. Pyrolancer can only use Medium)

Main Hand: Categories for the main hand slot include swords, axes, polearms, lances, staffs, wands, daggers, bows. There are also some unique main hand items such as the Lute for the Troubadour class. Like armor, classes are restricted to certain categories.

Off Hand/Accessory: The off hand(or accessory) slot can be a weapon, shield or another unique item type depending on the class you are outfitting. The Paladin uses a shield, while the Nightstalker uses a quiver.

Amulet: Amulets are free of class restrictions, and you may equip them onto any character you wish.

Ring: Like amulets, rings also do not have any class restrictions.

Artifact: Artifacts can offer unique enhancements for classes, and as such are restricted to a specific class.

Our focus is going to be on less, but more more meaningful drops. We want it to feel good when you find a piece of gear, as opposed to stockpiling a bunch of junk to sell off to a merchant. The loot itself will be very much Diablo-like, with a few different tiers of rarity, and multiple special properties that make every drop unique. The highest rarity is Legendary, and these items will be hand-crafted, possessing unique properties that no other piece of gear can have.

The last thing to mention is that for now, we are not planning on having any level restrictions on gear. Any new recruit could use that shiny Legendary item you just found(provided there are no class restrictions), and we feel this will help minimize the negative effect of character deaths. And as an added bonus, you won’t need to save sets of inferior gear for your recruits.

There are a few other customization options for characters that we would like to add, but we cannot yet guarantee they will make it into the game at launch without hitting the necessary stretch goals:

Skins: As mentioned in a previous update, we’re so close to unlocking 8 Social Goals which will give every class one alternate skin. However, we would really like to add a lot more!

Races: Our world contains multiple races of people, but for now each class will be locked to a specific race. If we get to add multiple races for every class, we will also be introducing unique racial traits on top of that.

Hairstyles(or Helmets): We’d like to be able to add a choice of hairstyles and helmets(when applicable) for every class to further differentiate them.

Gender: This is the most difficult one, as it is essentially doubling the art workload for the classes we plan to offer.

As stated, the above options will all be stretch goals as they will require us to hire even more artists. Hopefully we can hit them, but regardless we’ll still try do as much as we can before(and after) launch.

Fan Art Contest

We’ve only received a few entries so far for our Fan Art Contest, and so we’ve decided to extend the deadline until Wednesday September 6th at 12am EST.

It’s open to everyone and we’re giving away prizes to the top 5 entries. For more information, read this update.

Community Forum

One of our backers, Sinistar, asked if he could start up a community forum for fans to engage in discussions about The Iron Oath. Since we haven’t set anything up yet we thought it was a good idea! You can find the forum HERE and we encourage you all to sign-up. Chris and I will try our best to drop by as often as possible, but most of our attention will still go towards the private Discord server.

Social Goals

I’ve updated the Social Goals graphic, and we’re so close to unlocking alternate skins for every class! Head to the Social Goals section on the campaign page and find out what you can do to help!

Thank you for reading, and once again thank you for your support! We hope you’re all ready for the stretch goals

We did it! We are absolutely blown away right now, and really did not expect to get funded this early in the day! Thank you so much to all of you for your incredible support on this journey so far. We are so damn happy right now and we cannot wait to get back into full-time work on The Iron Oath, but we still have one week to go here and we're not done yet! Let's get started on some stretch goals, shall we?

Guild Council($55K): Council members can be recruited from all over the world, but not all will be equal in ability. Each member will offer you advice and has a number of tasks that they can perform for the guild.

The Master at Arms is in charge of your warrior classes, he or she is able to train them either as a group or individually, and you can also send them on missions to various destinations to find promising new recruits. The Archmage functions in the same fashion, but is instead charged with your mages.

The Emissary is your guild’s chosen representative for improving your reputation with other factions. When assigned, they will slowly increase your reputation over time with the targeted faction. In addition, they will bring a variety of missions to your attention that the target requires assistance with, allowing you to further increase your reputation and get rewarded in the process.

The Master of Intrigue is your main advisor and functions as your eyes and ears throughout the land. They will bring important matters to your attention that you may otherwise never hear about(such as a plot to kill a liege) in addition to any unsubstantiated rumors that may be worth looking into. They also have the ability to disrupt relations between factions of your choosing, potentially providing the spark that leads to an all out war.

As a bonus, when a character of yours retires from active duty, you will be given the chance to keep them around by offering them a position on your council. If their loyalty rating is high enough, they will likely accept the job.

Sea Travel & Encounters($65K): Every major coastal city will be given a port from which they can trade and send troops along numerous sea-routes. You can pay for passage across these routes in order to save time, but much like on land, there is a possibility of Encounters. Many different types of sea encounters exist, such as being boarded by pirates(in which combat will take place on the ship’s deck), spotting a tradeship, or even crossing paths with an entire fleet.

Purchase your own vessel($70K): If you gather enough coin, you may purchase a vessel of your own to do with what you wish. The ship will act as a separate unit for you to command in the overworld. You may leave it behind at a port while you continue on land, and order it around the map as you see fit. Paying for its crew, upgrades, and maintenance can get costly. Fortunately, owning a vessel will also present some unique opportunities for you to profit. A merchant may approach you and offer payment to transport their goods across the sea, or a family seeking refuge in a new city may pay for passage.

If you so desire, you can turn to piracy on the high seas, stalking trading lanes and taking what you want by force. Being branded as pirates will have its own set of consequences(and opportunities) however, so you best be prepared to deal with them.

$85K: This stretch goal will be revealed once the Guild Council is unlocked!

We're incredibly excited about all three of these stretch goals, and we really feel they will add a large amount of depth to the overworld and guild management. We hope that you feel the same!

A big thank you once again to everyone. Whether you pledged or just helped spread the word(or both!), your support has been amazing and we are so grateful to each of you. Let's keep it going now and unlock some stretch goals together!

The Kickstarter project didn't describe it this way, but am I right to see it as a side-scrolling grid&turn-based RPG? Like Golden Axe RPG, in a sense?

I mean, they are always walking left to right, and the levels look relatively long and narrow like a sidescroller. Personally that gets me more excited than the written description on the site, which just says environment sizes vary and sounds a tad more generic. Narrow horizontal playing fields navigated in a sidescrolling manner on the other hand sound new and fun. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but mixing Golden Axe sidescroller-ness with a hex-grid SRPG seems really fresh!

Thank you so much Ya it's essentially a side-scroller, but with doors and stairs that move you around a "3D" dungeon layout(like how Darkest Dungeon is done, but with a bit more freedom to move around the corridors). There is a little bit of vertical exploration(walking along a hall could have some adjoining rooms on either side for you to walk into and explore) but in general you'll mostly be traveling horizontally.

Hey everyone. Just dropping by one last time before the end of our campaign to inform you that we're successfully funded and approaching our $85K stretch goal which is for character customization & races. If you haven't checked the campaign yet, we'd appreciate if you could take a moment and possibly help us push for the last few stretch goals!